Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera’s aides and officials in Vice President Saulos Chilima have been pocketing bribes and other kickbacks from business tycoons, a court in the UK has been told.
One Malawi Police official at the centre of the case has been identified as a Mr Jere.
He is “believed to work within the Malawian Police procurement process as the individual who makes requests” where kickbacks are allegedly paid to the officials. One officer is alleged to have been promised or received $50,000 (about 50 million Malawi Kwacha) on a $7 million (about 7.8 billion Malawi Kwacha) tender, a journalist, Kondwani Bell Munthali, who attended the court session yesterday, claimed on Facebook.
Bits of the court documents that Malawi24 has seen on social media were prepared and used in court by the UK’s National Crimes Agency (NCA). The documents also insinuate that some members of the judiciary are tangled in the cobweb of the multibillion corruption scandal involving tenders won between August 2019 and October 2020, spreading across both Peter Mutharika and Lazarus Chakwera’s respective administrations.
Kondwani Bell Munthali, a journalist who attended the hearing, claimed on a Facebook post that some of the people implicated in the NCA documents work at “State House, Office of Vice President, Police, Ministry of Justice, ACB (Anti-Corruption Bureau), MRA (Malawi Revenue Authority) and PPDA (Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Authority)”.
He further alleges that the list that the NCA presented in Court yesterday also fingered out a Cabinet minister.
It is yet to be established if either the incumbent President, Mr Lazarus Chakwera, or his predecessor(s), have their hands engrossed in the scandal. Munthali said “the list thát was presented in court is short, nőt the full list”.
The session yesterday was set to determine whether Zuneth Abdul Rashid Sattar should be allowed to travel to Malawi where his associate, Ashok Nair, face corruption charges. Mr Sattar had been barred from travelling to Malawi by NCA over fears that he could manipulate evidence on a case involving a former cabinet minister and government’s chief whip, Kezzie Msukwa.
Sattar, despite being arrested in the UK, he is yet to be charged.
Devastating for Sattar, why has he yet to be charged, evidence is clearly there.